


Like Being Submerged in Your Contradictions

by WelpThisIsHappening



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Bellarke Bingo, Canon Universe, F/M, Future Fic, happy valentines day i guess, hey new fandom here's some...quasi smut, really just some love affirming sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:35:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22720333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WelpThisIsHappening/pseuds/WelpThisIsHappening
Summary: She supposes she's not surprised.Clarke probably should have expected it. After all, her romantic track record is not really all that impressive. But. She hoped. And to say that she's a little disappointed to find out sex with Bellamy is not as great as she wanted it to be is an understatement.So now he wants to talk about it. Figures.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 10
Kudos: 130





	Like Being Submerged in Your Contradictions

She’s sweaty. 

And out of breath. 

The sheets keep sticking to the back of Clarke’s left leg. Only her left leg. Which is admittedly kind of weird, but she’s also admittedly preoccupied with how much all of this absolutely, positively sucks to be too worried about the state or location of the bedding. 

Damn.

It was supposed to be better than this. 

Easier. Great. Time for themselves and a guaranteed few hours with no interruptions. No rush. No pressure. Less...whatever this was. Not easy. 

Not great, honestly. 

Pretty awful. Bumped knees and scrunched noses, no rhythm, hardly any friction, just—quick shifts and kisses that were over before they really began, like they were racing towards the finish line if only to say that they’d crossed it and she can’t cry. 

That would be insane. 

In the grand scheme of everything, this is not the worst thing that has ever happened to Clarke.

It doesn’t even crack the top ten. 

And yet. 

She’s marginally worried that she’s going to bite a hole through her lip, twisting it between her teeth while she tries to figure out where this went wrong and how this went wrong and it makes so much sense. They make sense. 

Together. 

They should have worked together. 

God, maybe she sucks at sex because her vocabulary is also pretty lacking. God, she hopes she’s not the one who’s bad at sex. No one else has ever mentioned that before. But, then again—most of the sex she’s had has been...fuck, she seriously can’t come up with descriptors right now. The disappointment that has taken root in the pit of Clarke’s stomach is far too heavy for her to do anything except acknowledge it, lips pressed together and breathing turning shallow and there’s a considerable amount of space between them. She’s at least seventy-two percent positive Bellamy is half hanging off the bed. 

Her right leg is starting to cramp up. 

She does her best to move without making it obvious, a slow shift and gritted teeth, but Clarke can’t help her hiss of pain when her calf muscle seizes up and maybe she’ll just stare at that one, particular spot on the ceiling for the rest of time. 

That seems like the only reasonable response. 

The bed creaks. 

“So, uh—” Bellamy starts, every letter sounding strained. “That was, uh—”  
  
“—Oh my God, stop it.”  
  
“No, Clarke, c’mon, that was—”  
  
“—I’m going to punch you, I swear.”

He laughs. 

Clarke’s neck doesn’t appreciate the way she snaps it towards him — and maybe this whole thing is just a commentary on how old she is, or at least how old she feels and that second thing is ten-thousand times more depressing than any sort of disappointing sex with the guy she’s been wanting to have sex with for more than a century. 

Shit. 

Shit, shit, _shit_. 

“I don’t know what to be more offended by,” Clarke sneers, “you laughing at me, or everything that’s happened in the last fifteen minutes.”  
  
“Ah, c’mon, it was longer than fifteen minutes.”  
  
“Maybe we should have timed it.”  
  
Bellamy stops laughing. 

And Clarke feels bad — she does. But the disappointment appears to be evolving into something a little bitter and a little angry, clawing its way up her throat and threatening to spill out her mouth and she can’t believe this. 

Well, no—she can. That’s the problem. 

She can believe the shit and the garbage and something _else_ that didn’t play out exactly the way she never should have let herself imagine it could be. 

Melodramatic idiot. 

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Bellamy mumbles. “You want to talk about it?”  
  
“About what, exactly?”  
  
“Clarke.”  
  
“Saying my name over and over again is not going to help.”  
  
“Yeah, I picked up on that weirdly enough. I, uh—that sucked, right?”  
  
“Did we get to the sucking?”

He lets out a strangled noise that almost immediately turns into something far closer to a groan, an arm splayed out over his still-tilted head. “No,” Bellamy agrees, and that’s a strange way to do that. “I don’t think we did, actually.”  
  
“Lame.”  
  
“That’s a word for it, yeah. Why?”  
  
“You’re really determined to talk about this, aren’t you?” Clarke asks sharply. He shrugs. He still hasn’t moved his arm. “People are going to be back here soon and they’re going to need—”  
  
“—They can wait a couple minutes.”  
  
“Really got a high opinion of your own in-bed prowess, huh?”  
  
Bellamy’s arm might be marble for all the moving it does, but Clarke can still see the dots of color that explode on his cheeks, in between every freckle and the few scars that have lingered on his skin. 

She’s not just Sanctum’s biggest idiot. She’s this place's biggest asshole. 

“Obviously not,” he grumbles. “Although, I haven’t heard many complaints before. And I—all I’m saying is that maybe that’s our problem. Thinking about...expiration dates. Time limits.”  
  
“Speak English.”  
  
“I could say it in Trig if you want.”  
  
Clarke might growl. The sound scratches at her throat and leaves her gnashing her teeth, one side of Bellamy’s mouth tugging up at the sarcasm. “Is this your way of flirting? Because it could use some work, honestly.”  
  
“That’s—this isn’t what I thought would happen.”

Clarke blinks. Once, twice, opens her mouth only to close it and, grand scheme, it is ridiculous for _that_ to be the thing. But it is and has been and it’s been a goddamn century. “Have you?” she whispers, voice barely that.  
  
“More times than I’d be willing to admit.”

She cannot cry. She will not cry. If Clarke keeps repeating it — in her head — then she’s sure, eventually, she’ll believe it. She won’t cry. In bed. With Bellamy. In her room. 

Their room, really. 

Because that’s been happening too. In the days and weeks and months since the end of everything else — since shaky peace treaties and only kind of understanding the anomaly, of losses and the destruction of the flame and the creation of this, a tremulous calm that Clarke still can’t entirely believe is real, with cabins and curtains on windows and books on shelves that Bellamy built himself, there’s been this growing...thing. Unspoken, unacknowledged, because it didn’t really have to be. 

Just was. Like always. Intertwined live and his boots sitting just inside the door and her head on his chest when he’d fall asleep because it’s easier to breathe that way. 

And yet. Part two. 

It’s an exaggeration to suggest that Clarke has grown impatient — couldn’t possibly, not after already waiting so long, several lifetimes worth of pent-up emotion, but she might be a little greedy and the words felt like they’d fallen out of her. 

_Maybe we could spend some time together. Just me and you_. 

And Bellamy had smiled. That smile. The one she’d let herself think about sometimes, when everything else was going to shit, when the world was, quite literally, coming to an end, more than once, Clarke would let her mind drift and she’d remember that smile, the way it would stretch across his face, lighten the color in his eyes and leave the skin there slightly crinkled like it couldn’t possibly contain all the emotion there. 

For her. 

Emotion he felt for her. 

She really is Sanctum’s biggest idiot. 

“You might as well say them out loud,” Bellamy mutters, practically jerking Clarke out of her reverie and they’re going to have to wash these sheets. 

She can’t imagine how they got quite this damp when nothing really...happened. 

“What?”  
  
“Out loud,” he repeats. “If you’re going to be thinking such obvious thoughts, you might as well tell me what they are.”  
  
“I’m not thinking anything.”  
  
“It is rude to lie.”  
  
Clarke huffs — frustration mixing with something else that feels a little bit like betrayal because she’s starting to find it insulting how endeared she is by him. And his awful jokes. And the overall length of his hair. 

“I’ve got a question,” Bellamy announces, flipping onto his side so he can prop his head on his head. It makes his hair shift, curls that drift dangerously close to his brows, and Clarke’s moving before she’s really thought about it, fingers ghosting over his forehead and his eyes flutter shut. 

He exhales softly, some of the rather obvious tension around them dissipating.

“Just one?”

“At least one that’s been bothering me for the last century or so.”  
  
Clarke doesn’t respond, can’t over the rising dread in the back of her brain, the feel of it creeping up her spine. Bellamy grins. 

“Why’d you put me on the list?” he asks, and Clarke is glad she hadn’t said anything. It ensures that she can gasp dramatically, eyes going wide enough that they actually start to water. His expression doesn’t change. Eventually she’ll think that’s important. “Because,” Bellamy continues, “I’ve been going over it and you didn’t even ask. I mean—there were plenty of people who could have been on the list and—”  
  
“—Are you kidding me, right now? This is what you want to talk about?”  
  
He hums, ducking down to kiss the bridge of her nose. Clarke may melt. That won’t help the overall state of the sheets. “Well, you didn’t want to talk. So—what’s that old Earth expression? I’m taking the floor.”  
  
“I don’t think that’s right at all.”  
  
“Ah, well, an attempt is at least being made.”

Clarke clicks her tongue, but she can’t quite get herself to be frustrated and that is...something. She supposes. Hopes, maybe. 

She wants to hope, at least. 

That’s always felt like half the battle.  
  
“Can I keep going now?” Bellamy quips, eyebrows jumping when Clarke pinches his forearm. “I’m going to take that as a yes.”  
  
“Was my threat of punching you not really that threatening?”  
  
“No, it wasn’t, honestly.”  
  
“God.”  
  
“Anyway,” he says pointedly, “my question is still the same. Why? Because I—there were people you left off, and I understand why you did, but what was I bringing to the table?”  
  
“Just full of Earth clichés today, aren’t you?”  
  
“Technically, it’s night.”

Clarke yanks on the blanket, quick enough that she manages to take Bellamy by surprise and she lets herself gloat about that for approximately two and a half seconds before her gaze drifts to his suddenly exposed body and—

“You are staring, Princess.”

She cannot keep bouncing through emotions like this. Clarke’s mind feels like it’s racing, plummeting through some kind of time vortex where they can have conversations like this and moments like this and—“I can’t believe you just called me that,” she mutters, pulling the blanket up over her shoulders. 

Like that will help protect her. 

It’s a dumb metaphor. 

And one she knows Bellamy picks up on almost immediately. 

He didn’t really have to ask her to voice her thoughts. He’s always been too good at that. Disarmingly good, even. 

“Big guns, or however the saying goes,” Bellamy grins. 

“You really think this is working for you, don’t you?”  
  
“Nah, if it was working, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all. But that’s kind of my point.”  
  
“Convoluted.”  
  
“A little. And you’re avoiding the question. Still staring, too.”  
  
Clarke hums, letting her head drop back to the pillow and she doesn’t try to mask the way her eyes move that time. She doesn’t actually move — is far too twisted in the sheets to even attempt that — but her gaze traces every inch of Bellamy, follows the curve of his shoulder and the slope of his back, lingers on the scars she knows and those she hasn’t mapped yet, more markers of time and years and they were supposed to have time tonight. 

Finally, 

And if this was all they were going to get, then—

“Clarke,” Bellamy presses. “I can’t actually read your mind.”  
  
“No?”  
  
“It’s weird, I know.”  
  
Her laugh doesn’t have much humor to it, is far shakier than Clarke would like it to be, but her lungs also don’t feel like they’re collapsing, so she assumes that’s a step in the right emotional direction. “Sometimes I used to think you could,” she whispers. “Those first couple of days after the bridge. Before the Ark came down and everything—”  
  
“—Went to shit?”  
  
“Always seems to, doesn’t it?”  
  
“I hope not. Still not an answer.”  
  
“You’re harping”  
  
“Curious,” Bellamy amends, sliding closer to her. There’s still space, enough that the heat coming off him isn’t more than a passing graze of warmth on Clarke’s cheek, and she’ll have to thank him for that at some point. For not pushing. For knowing. For understanding. 

Clarke licks her lips — dimly aware of the way Bellamy’s shoulders shift as she does, and she probably should have offered him back some of the blanket. 

She doesn’t. 

“I didn’t want to make it,” Clarke starts, and she can’t actually get her voice above a vaguely guarded murmur. He doesn’t blink. “I mean—you know that, right?”  
  
Nothing. 

She didn’t expect there to be anything. 

Her mouth is very dry. 

“But I—well, I just...we had to think about what people could do and what they’d bring to a bunker. You know—guards and engineers, doctors, all those things. I—” Clarke shakes her head, confusion rattling around her brain. “You know all of this.”  
  
Bellamy nods. “Yeah, that wasn’t my question, though. You picked ninety-eight names, let me fall asleep on that piece of garbage couch—”  
  
“—How long have you been holding that in?”  
  
“At least a hundred years? Can I finish now?” Clarke sticks her tongue out. He kisses between her eyebrows. “I do know all of that. Which is why it never made sense to put me on the list. Not really. Not after everything I’d done and—” 

Bellamy’s breath hitches, a sharp inhale through gritted teeth, and the emotion in the pit of Clarke’s stomach shifts again. She moves, arm darting out and palm flat on his cheek. He’d shaved a few days earlier, the growing stubble scraping at her skin and the feel of it is almost comforting. Grounding, even. Like it’s reminding her that he’s there and with her and that’s always been the case. 

She can’t believe the sex was so God awful. 

“I couldn’t,” Clarke rasps, “not—I wanted to do it right. After everything I’d done, too. Pick the best and make the right choice and I am...greedy.”  
  
“How do you figure?”  
  
“With you?” 

“That was a question.”  
  
“Yeah, well, it’ll sound insane otherwise.”

He chuckles, twisting his head so he can nip at the back of her wrist. It leaves another scratch of stumble against her, but Clarke’s lungs are evolving again and for as desperate as they’d been, now, twenty-two minutes earlier, this is somehow even better. This soft and almost tremulous thing, not quite cautious, but calm — all practiced ease and a distinct lack of personal space. 

She wants to touch every single inch of him. 

She wants him to touch every single inch of her. 

“Greedy,” Clarke says again, only a little disappointed that it sounds like an admission. Of what, she’s not entirely sure. Not yet, at least. “I couldn’t—no, that’s not even it, I wouldn’t do anything else. Because, well—you’re right, aren’t you?”  
  
“No applicable skills?”  
  
“I mean—no, that’s not true. You are—you can do so much, Bell, and you are...well, you won’t shut up about talking and people trust you. Way more than me.”  
  
“That does sound pretty insane.”  
  
“What did you keep saying? Will you let me finish?” 

He shifts again, crowds into her space like he knows he can now. Clarke’s fingers push into his hair — nowhere else to go, or so she will tell herself when she’s trying to forget about the less-than-ideal parts of this night — forehead finding Bellamy’s and there really more freckles on his cheeks she ever expects. 

“People trust you,” Clarke mutters. “And that’s—ok, yeah, I mean—” She stuttering now, stammering over words and explanations because both of those things are wholly founded in feelings and she’s still kind of coming to terms with that. 

Six years of radio messages are one thing. 

Actually living them is another. 

And she’s a pessimist. 

“Why, Clarke?” Bellamy asks, dragging the question across the curve of her jaw and her back arches when his teeth nip at her skin. 

“I wouldn’t have let anything happen to you.”

She doesn’t mean for the words to soar out of her the way that they do, half shouted and honestly meant and Clarke has to blink again. Her vision has gone a little glossy. 

Bellamy doesn’t respond. Which—yeah, that’s fair. He just holds her gaze for a moment before he noses at her cheek, a hand on her blanket-covered hip and Clarke wishes she didn’t close her eyes. She wishes she could watch every shift when he manages to inch even closer to her, the way his back twists and the muscles there tense, trying to do something without actually saying anything. 

So, she does, instead. 

“I picked people,” Clarke continues, “all those roles I knew we had to fill and I had—I was writing your name before I even really thought about.”  
  
“High praise,” Bellamy mumbles, mostly into the side of her neck. There are goosebumps on Clarke’s skin, breath coming a little quicker than it had a few moments before. 

“God, you’re annoying.”  
  
He hums, more kisses and wandering hands, and she’s got no idea when or how she moved onto her back, only that Bellamy’s forearms are on either side of her head and her fingers start tracing scars. On instinct. And something far deeper than that. 

“I just—” Clarke says, “it didn’t make sense not to have you on the list. To not give you…”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Time. To have a chance, just to...be. Even after the world ended.”  
  
“That happened eventually.”  
  
“Did it?”  
  
Bellamy nods, tugging lightly at the top of the sheet and Clarke doesn’t object when he pulls the fabric down. Maybe they should just throw it all away. Metaphorically. Literally. “What do you think we’re doing now?” he asks lightly, and Clarke genuinely isn’t sure how much more of this her spine will be able to take. 

She arches under him, certain her skin is actually starting to buzz, a low hum in the back of her brain and in between every single one of her ribs, like she’s about to burst from the inside out. 

“Having really bad sex?” Clarke quips.  
  
“Ha, ha, ha. What did I tell you before? When I woke up from the shitty couch.”  
  
“Why do you have so many opinions on this couch?”  
  
“An answer,” Bellamy says, but there’s a hint of something just on the edge of his voice and Clarke knows the goosebumps have betrayed her as soon as he laughs. 

“Bastard.”  
  
“Yes, that’s been fairly well documented over the years. Do you want a hint?”  
  
“Are you going to try and make out with me again or not?”  
  
He sighs — although Clarke can still feel the way his mouth turns up while he drags it towards her collarbone, alternating kisses with the soft graze of his teeth and the stubble that she’s really starting to be questionably into. 

“I told you if I was on that list, then so were you,” Bellamy says. “And I meant it Clarke. If you were trying to give me time to—”  
  
“—Live.”  
  
“Babe, seriously, the interruptions have got to stop.”  
  
Clarke has witnessed far more explosions than any single human being ever should, has dealt with radiation and death and destruction and an almost absurd number of apocalypses. Her body has been hers and not, some scars she doesn’t entirely understand yet, and even after all of that, the bullshit and the garbage and the distinct lack of time, nothing has prepared her for Bellamy Blake to call her _babe_ while dragging his mouth towards the top of her right thigh.

She gasps. 

It’s a lame reaction, really. 

Although she had closed her eyes before. So, grand scheme. Again. 

“Yeah?” Bellamy asks, far too knowing against the jut of her hip. 

“I’ll kick you, I swear.”  
  
He chuckles, more warmth that fans across Clarke and her back almost audibly protests the contortions she’s putting it into, but something feels like it snaps in the very center of her and she can’t be bothered by the confines of normal human muscle mechanics. 

She tries to grind up, to cant her hips and force something — but that might have been their problem from the get. Forced into situations they couldn’t control, a distinct lack of options or time and now they’ve got both. 

And Clarke would pick Bellamy every single chance she got. 

“We’ve got time now, that's my point," he says, soft and so goddamn earnest Clarke is pleasantly surprised her heart doesn’t simply burst out of her chest. 

She’s glad. 

That would be messy. 

And probably the only thing that could distract her from what happens next — Bellamy sliding further down the bed, fingers brushing the inside of Clarke’s legs until his lips take over and she stares at that same spot on the ceiling. 

She doesn’t resent it quite as much anymore. 

“You know that right, babe?” Bellamy asks.

"Is that why you asked about the list? This was a lesson?"

“Of course not. I have been wondering. And I had some guesses, but you know, we've been busy. So, it's nice to be able to ask them because this is is it. Every cliché we could come up with. The start of it all and the beginning of the end and—”  
  
“—Oh, that’s a good one,” Clarke interrupts. She’s a little breathless again, reaching a blind hand out to card her fingers into his hair. And hold him exactly where he is. He doesn’t seem all that inclined to move, honestly. 

“Yeah, I’m big on that one too. We get to go slow now. Be boring.”  
  
“Boring?”  
  
“Boring,” Bellamy echoes. “Linger, even. In every single thing we do. Get greedy with all of it because that’s what I want. I want to get greedy with you too, Clarke.”

“Yeah?”  
  
“Disappointing that wasn’t more obvious.” She laughs — soft and easy and the hope that rushes through both of her arms is barely contained by the tips of her fingers, a burst of energy and want and—“Just relax, ok?” Bellamy mutters. “Let me take care of you.”  
  
“What was that about things sounding insane?”  
  
“Rude. And the definition of insanity is doing the same thing while expecting different results, right?”  
  
“Yuh huh.”  
  
“So, let’s try something different.”

Clarke doesn’t get a chance to refute, no opportunity for the continuation of vaguely playful and slightly flirty banter. Every single word she’s ever learned, in a variety of languages, disappears as soon as Bellamy’s head drops and tongue darts out and neither one of them acknowledge that something in her back definitely cracks. 

Or how tight her fingers get in his hair. 

If anything, that second thing seems to spur him on. 

He makes this one, specific noise that Clarke will probably think about on rotation for at least the next one-hundred years, a rhythm that had felt impossible the first time they tried this. Although, to be fair, they hadn’t tried this. 

That was definitely their first mistake. 

Bellamy mouths at her, long swipes of his tongue that eventually turn to pressure and fingers and he must mumble something because Clarke can just make out sounds that almost resemble words and might be _yeah, like that_ and _fuck, you feel good_. She closes her eyes again, can’t think of anything else to do when all Clarke wants to do is linger in the moment and the feeling. 

She rocks up. He pushes down. They settle into this and each other and it’s exactly the same as it’s always been, as it probably always should have been, but, for the first time, Clarke doesn’t feel like she’s running on borrowed time. 

She doesn’t even feel like she’s running, while everything is moving around her — she’s just...just. Content. Calm. She’s—  
  
“Oh, fuck,” she hisses, Bellamy's low chuckle far too pleased while she arches up and suggesting that she feels everything is absurd. Insane, even. 

And yet. Version three point oh. 

Clarke’s breath catches and her body goes tight before it all seems to shatter, a break that’s somehow overwhelming and perfect, rushing from the top of her head to the tip of her toes and Bellamy groans when her leg drapes over his shoulder. 

Both of her calf muscles are perfectly fine. 

And he doesn’t move immediately, lets the moment stay exactly the way Clarke wants it to, but then Bellamy is crowding in her space again and his mouth is on hers and it’s back to greedy and demanding, any sense of slow forgotten in how much they both want. 

Hope. 

“Smug does not look good on you,” Clarke mutters. It does not come out like the insult she wants it to, Bellamy’s lower lip stuck out when he nods. 

That makes it easier to catch between her teeth, though. So. Whatever. 

He talks even more as they start to move again, running his mouth with encouragements and promises and the word _babe_ on loop, if only because Clarke’s hips jerk every time it happens. And it still might not be the best they could do — the nose thing is really going to be a logistical nightmare if they can’t figure out the proper angle to turn their heads for optimum kissing, but kissing also seems like something of an afterthought when it turns into just shared breath and shared space and Bellamy’s eyes close at some point. 

Clarke will also think about that. 

For a very long time. 

Which is what they have now. 

Together. 

She’s out of breath again, sweat clinging to the ends of her hair and the light that drifts across the floor is a little different than it had been earlier. The shadows stretch and the curtains flutter in a soft breeze, like the whole of it all is simply waiting for—

Clarke flutters her fingers, not much space between her and the arm next to hers and Bellamy’s wrist flips. “That was smooth,” he murmurs, hand finding hers. He’s smiling. She can tell. 

“Yeah, that was my plan from the beginning.”  
  
“Was it?”  
  
She hums, head falling to the side. She’d been right about the smiling thing. The same one she’d wanted when she asked for this and before she believed she could. Hers. Theirs, really. “Absolutely,” Clarke says. “You think it worked?”  
  
“I think it will.”  
  
“Yeah, me too.”

They do eventually put new sheets on the bed, but only after they’ve woken up from asleep in it, a tangle of limbs and feelings and the beginning of the end. 

**Author's Note:**

> What's a timeline or background explanation? Never heard of them. 
> 
> I wrote this in literally three hours this morning. I have no idea what it is or why it happened, but if you liked it, I think you're top notch. Come talk to me on on [Tumblr](http://welllpthisishappening.tumblr.com/) where I am straight up losing my mind over Bellarke.


End file.
